ABOUT IDP The International Day of Non-Violence began on 2 October 2007, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence.

According to General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/271 of 15 June 2007, which established the commemoration, the International Day is an occasion to "disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public awareness". The resolution reaffirms "the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence" and the desire "to secure a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding and non-violence".

Introducing the resolution in the General Assembly on behalf of 140 co-sponsors, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, Mr. Anand Sharma, said that the wide and diverse sponsorship of the resolution was a reflection of the universal respect for Mahatma Gandhi and of the enduring relevance of his philosophy. Quoting the late leader’s own words, he said: "Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man".The idea for a day devoted to non-violence came from the conference of “Peace, Non-Violence and Empowerment—Gandhian Philosophy in the 21st Century” held in January 2007. India introduced the resolution to observe an International Day of Non-Violence on October 2nd, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. On June 15th 2007, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously voted to officially recognize this day.The UN resolution for the International Day of Non-Violence “stresses that non-violence, tolerance, full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for democracy, development, mutual understanding and respect for diversity are interlinked and reinforcing.” It is hoped that this day will serve as another catalyst to help all people to become peacemakers and models of active non-violence.Mahatma Gandhi is often recognized as the father of non-violence since he helped end the British occupation of India using only nonviolent strategies. Gandhi is an inspiration to many peacemakers such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day.

Screening -- Little Town of Bethlehem -- Thursday, September 30, 2010 -- 7 pm -- Union Theater (4th Floor), co-sponsored by King Fahd Center for Middle East & Islamic Studies and Omni Center for Peace, Justice and EcologyThis film by award-winning director Jim Hanon (Miss HIV, 2007) follows the stories of 3 men (1 Israeli Jew and 2 Palestinians) engaged in non-violent struggles against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.Their three stories are interwoven through the major events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics and following through the first Intifada, suicide bombings in Israel, the Oslo Accords, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the second Intifada. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad each describe the events from their unique perspective, interjecting personal reflections and explaining how these events led them to become involved in the nonviolence movement.The trailer for the film is available here: http://littletownofbethlehem.org/trailer/ The film will be premiering at Universities across the country from September 21st (World Peace Day) through October 2 (International Day of Non-Violence). The University of Arkansas is one of 90 college, university, and seminary campuses screening the film this week alone.The event is free and open to the public. The film runs approximately 70 minutes. Faculty affiliated with the King Fahd Center will lead a discussion afterwards.

BOOKS--Mills, Stephanie. On Gandhi’s Path. Rev. Ground Zero (July 2010). A biography of Bob Swann: anti-Nuclear submarines, WWII draft resister, architect and builder of small, sustainable houses and communities, advocate of community land trusts, founder of “Berkshire dollars.” Chap. 3, “Satyagraha, American Style,” places Swann in the history of US nonviolence in the first half of the 20th c. Friend of Bayard Rustin and other war opponents. Mills has traced her own life in a half-dozen other books on radical ecology: In Praise of Nature, What Happened to Ecology, In Service of the Wild, etc.--Tidrick, Kathryn. Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life. Tauris, 2006. Rev. Peace and Change (April 2010). “…original and insightful” especially in her “extended exploration of Gandhi’s spiritual thinking and the …place of eccentric and unorthodox Western thought in shaping Gandhi’s spiritual outlook.”A book by Gandhi little known in the WestHIND SWARAJ, INDIAN HOME RULE, According to Doug Allen, “Gandhi’s most influential book.”

Hind Swaraj Or Indian Home Rule, by MK - mkgandhiwww.mkgandhi.org/swarajya/coverpage.htm - SimilarInterpreting Gandhi's Hind Swaraj Gandhi's Hind Swaraj is no rejection of liberative modernity. Rather his effort can be interpreted as an attempt to integrate these ..Bhaskar Menon, “Hind Swaraj II: Gandhi’s Legacy at One Century.” Fellowship (Fall 2009).

VIDEOS International Day of Non-violence - videosInternational Day of Non-Violence - video series - compiled by the Lutheran Peace Fellowship (LPF)lutheran_peace.tripod.com/nonviolence_day.htm

GandhiTopiaMahatma Gandhi Community Forum: This group fosters the 2nd of October, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday which has been declared by the UN as International Day of Nonviolence. www.gandhitopia.org/group/idn -

The Gandhi-King Community - For Global Peace with Social Justice ... October 2, 2010 from 10:30am to 12pm – This is a Global event - Find the location nearest to you ... gandhiking.ning.com/

YouTube - UN International Day of Non-violence: www.un.org/events/nonviolence One Man's Hands by Pete Seeger performed by Chad Mitchell Trio GandhiToday.org. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YF0CH_CZPw -

Ahimsa Day 2009, International Day of Non Violence (New Delhi ...This is a seven minute trailer of a longer video recording of a public event held in Delhi on 30 January 2009 at the India International Centre in New Delhi ...www.archive.org › Moving Image Archive › Open Source Movies –

International Day of Empathic Action (IDEA) | The Center for ...Aug 18, 2009 ... Oct. 2 was inaugurated in 2007 by the United Nations as an International Day for Nonviolence. We imagine Gandhi would delight in a ...www.cnvc.org/international-day-empathic-action-idea -

WORLD PEACE COUNCIL Sri Swami Madhavananda World Peace Council"DAY OF NON-VIOLENCE FOR WORLD PEACE" On the occasion of the UN International Day of Non-Violence in honor of Mahatma Gandhiji 2nd October, 2010, Umag, ... www.worldpeacesummit.net/

International Conscientious Objectors' Day is observed around the world on 15th of May. It has been observed with nonviolent actions since 1986. ...www.wri-irg.org/campaigns/co

OMNI AND NONVIOLENCEFrom its inception, OMNI has looked to Gandhi, King and other advocates of nonviolence. In 2009, OMNI established a Nonviolence Endowment in the Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas to encourage the study of nonviolence by students and faculty. OMNI is building a Culture of Peace partly by embracing all national and international DAYS that affirm nonviolence, internationalism, toleration, social and economic justice, human rights--for example, Gandhi’s birthday and Human Rights Day (UDHR)--, and OMNI is building a Culture of Peace partly by reconstituting national and international DAYS that support violence, wars, imperialism—for example, Mother’s Day/Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day for Peace and Columbus Day / Indigenous People’s Day.

This DAY deserves special attention. If you are especially interested in Gandhi and King, contact Gladys about becoming the coordinator of OMNI’s INTERNATIONAL DAY OF NONVIOLENCE.

END OF NEWSLETTER FOR 4TH International Day of Nonviolence, October 2, Gandhi’s Birthday

1st U.S. Soldier of Alleged "Kill Team" Targeting Afghan Civilians Faces Military Tribunal for War Crimes

Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock is the first of twelve US soldiers accused of forming a secret "kill team" in Afghanistan that murdered unarmed Afghan civilians at random and collected body parts, such as fingers, for trophies. They are also accused of using hashish, dismembering and photographing corpses, and possessing human bones such as a skull and leg bones. The Army is attempting to prevent the release of dozens of photographs that reportedly show Morlock and other soldiers posing with the murdered Afghan civilians. Democracy Now 9-29-10 Filed under Afghanistan

Passengers of Jewish Aid Boat to Gaza Allege Israeli MistreatmentPassengers of a Jewish aid boat prevented from reaching Gaza are accusing the Israeli military of excessive force in seizing their ship. On Tuesday, eight of the nine activists aboard the Jewish Boat to Gaza ship Irene were released after being apprehended miles off the Gaza coast. They were attempting to deliver a symbolic load of humanitarian aid to break the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. Israeli activist and former Israel Air Force pilot Yonatan Shapira said he was beaten and shocked with a taser gun.

Yonatan Shapira: "The soldiers were very brutal to us, they didn’t kill us like they killed other Palestinians and Muslims, but they were very brutal. I got shot with a tazer shock gun, electric and was brutally treated just like my brother Itamar. We were detained pretty violently and later, now, we were released and they blame us, they accuse us of attacking the soldiers and threatening the soldiers and of course everything is upside down, it’s a complete lie."

Other passengers included the eighty-two-year-old Holocaust survivor and Israeli resident Reuven Moskovitz, who lived under Nazi occupation as a child in Romania.

Reuven Moskovitz: "We are talking about one and half million people, 800,000 children. When I was a child, I was imprisoned for five years and I can’t forget it. I cannot sleep at night, I have nightmares that have haunted me all my life. Do you know what we are doing to these people (in Gaza), and what we are doing to our own soldiers?"

Aid Convoy Arrives in Turkey En Route to GazaThe Jewish Boat to Gaza was the latest attempt to break the blockade since Israel’s deadly attack on an aid flotilla in May. Meanwhile, a convoy of some 45 vehicles carrying aid has arrived in Turkey on its way to Gaza from Europe. The convoy, dubbed Viva Palestina, will attempt to reach Gaza next month. British activist Patrick Audai said Israel’s attack on the flotilla motivated him to take part.

Patrick Audai: "When I saw what those Israeli terrorists did to those innocent activists on board of Mavi Marmara, and those people who died, they are the heroes, they are the conscience of the world. That’s when I decided that I must make a stand and that I must come to Gaza and take medical aid to relieve the people there from their terrible suffering."Democracy Now 9-29-10

More… Court Exempts Corporations from Alien Tort LawA federal appeals court has ruled US corporations can no longer be sued for human rights violations abroad under the longstanding Alien Tort Statute. Earlier this month, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Alien tort claims can only be brought against individuals, not corporations. The ruling dismissed a lawsuit accusing the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell of complicity in the murder and torture of Nigerian activists including Ken Saro-Wiwa. In a separate opinion, Second Circuit Judge Pierre Leval criticized the ruling, writing, "The majority opinion deals a substantial blow to international law and its undertaking to protect fundamental human rights… So long as they incorporate, businesses will now be free to trade in or exploit slaves, employ mercenary armies to do dirty work for despots, perform genocides or operate torture prisons for a despot’s political opponents, or engage in piracy—all without civil liability to victims."Democracy Now 9-29-10

In The Progressive Oct. 2010 Jim Hightower in a few words explains 2 aspects of the recent surge of corporate domination: the Citizens United case, which allowed wealthy interests "to swamp America's elections"; and extraordinary fundraising, the US Chamber of Commerce jumping from $36 billion in 2008 to $75 billion this year, aided by Karl Rove's new "American Crossroads" expecting to raise $52 billion; plus plus plus see his list. And go to www.freespeechforpeople.org for opposition "before our democracy gets swept away."

Sunday, September 26, 2010

US POOR INCREASING AND INCREASINGLY UNINSURED 9-24-10 Democracy NowPaul Mason, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. Interv. DN 9-14. Mason economics ed. For BBC Newsnight. Discusses reduction of US middle-class, global workforce repeating struggles of workers of past, e.g. organizing for their welfare; US labor still unaware and unconnected to global labor struggle. Mason also author of Meltdown.

OBAMA’S SPEECH ON PALESTINE/ISRAEL 9-?-10Democracy Now 9-24-10 commentary by Canadian lawyer Diana Buttu criticized O’s speech 9-?-10 of empty words that ignored Israeli illegalities and general oppression. The peace process has failed for 17 years because the US did not insist that Israel follow international law, which would have prevented the settlements, wall, demolition of P homes, and other aspects of the occupation. She called for tying US aid to Israel obeying international law--a settlement freeze and reversal, stopping home demolition, etc. For full text google Democracy Now.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

September 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- EXCLUSIVE - Cageprisoners interview with Haider whose brother-in-law Mohammed Asghar and his friends became the victims of an unlawful US drone attack.

CP: Could you please introduce yourself?Bismillahir rahmaanir raheemHaider: My name is Haider. My brother-in-law, Mohammed Asghar, lived in Peshawar and worked as a money exchanger in the markets there.CP: Where did the drone attack take place?H: The attacks took place in North Waziristan, Miranshah in District Ahmadkheel. My brother-in-law had friends he was visiting in Waziristan. As he was a guest there - and as is the custom of the people - many of the locals gathered to welcome him into the area. He was sat with a group of these people from the community when everybody gathered to pray the evening prayer (‘Isha) together. The drone attack happened in the middle of the prayers and the entire congregation was martyred.CP: Were there any Taliban or Al Qaeda in the gathering or were they all civilians?H: All the people gathered were locals from the community who had come to welcome the new guest to the area. The people are renowned for their hospitality and it is unthinkable for them that somebody would come to visit and they would not have a gathering to welcome them. In total, 31 people were killed. Drone attacks are so powerful nobody can escape them merely injured.CP: How did you find out this happened?H: Between our area and Waziristan is an 8 hour journey. The drone attack happened at night time and we all knew about it by the following morning. People who had witnessed the attack had come to tell us and described what they saw of the remnants and damage in the aftermath. They said the attack was so severe that they could not even distinguish the bodies from one another- even the bones of the people were completely blown apart. The dead were completely unrecognisable. My brother in law’s coffin was tightly sealed and we were not allowed to open it to view anything. We had the coffin with us for 30 minutes before it was taken away for burial.CP: Why do you think the US/Pakistan government do this and what do you think they hope to gain?H: We just don’t know. We don’t know how much authority Pakistan has given the US to attack our areas and we don’t know until when the US are given free license by the Pakistani government to carry out these drone attacks. So far between 1400-1600 people have died as a result of these attacks. Nobody takes responsibility for these civilian deaths. Ask the journalists or officials for the true statistics, we know that it is 1400-1600 civilians, women and children killed. In this, they would have been lucky to even have 11 or 12 ‘militants’ amongst them. These attacks are so widespread that even my brother in law who lives in Peshawar was made a victim of it. Who do I appeal to? Where can I go? I don’t even know who to hold responsible for his death and how I do it.I am shocked that the US can come to attack Pakistan in this way and Pakistan does not even have the authority to question them on the deaths they are causing. The civilians in all these regions are extremely frightened and fearful. They can’t work in the day, nor can they sleep during the night. As soon as they hear the slightest sound of an aeroplane, they flee in panic from their homes and buildings trying to find a place for security. The whole community is in a state of fear and I just cannot explain to you how unbearable these calamities are for the people. Every household has at least half of its people martyred (i.e.: killed) as a result of these attacks. I simply do not understand what the understanding between Pakistan the US is on this matter.CP: Haider, thank you for taking the time to speak with us and we are sorry for your loss. This item was first posted at http://www.cageprisoners.com

Friday, September 24, 2010

Here is Eland's reply to Friendman's imperialism. Two new replies to the true-believers in US exceptionalism are Gary Wills' "Bomb Power" and Andrew Bacevich's "Washington Rules."

No Tears Needed Over the Demise of the U.S. Empire September 8, 2010Ivan Eland

In a recent column, Thomas Friedman, probably the most influential “internationalist”—read: proponent of U.S. interventionism in faraway places—has finally discovered that the United States must soon turn inward and put domestic economic growth first because of its massive public debt, huge federal budget deficit, and looming fiscal crisis caused by a dramatic automatic escalation in entitlements spending. Eureka, the foreign policy rapture has begun!

The real problem with Friedman’s piece is not him reaching a conclusion that was obvious even before the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, but that he laments how dangerous the world will be without the steady guiding hand of the United States. Friedman writes, and most Americans will be eager to believe, that the diminished interventionism of the now “frugal superpower” will be bad for the world because

“[T]he most unique and important feature of U.S. foreign policy over the last century has been the degree to which America’s diplomats and naval, air, and ground forces provided global public goods—from open seas to open trade and from containment to counterterrorism—that benefited many others besides us. U.S. power has been the key force maintaining global stability, and providing global governance, for the last 70 years. That role will not disappear, but it will certainly shrink.”Then Friedman, whose muse is Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University, quotes Mandelbaum as opining,

“When Britain could no longer provide global governance, the United States stepped in to replace it. No country now stands ready to replace the United States, so the loss to international peace and prosperity has the potential to be greater as America pulls back than when Britain did.”But have the British Empire and the American Empire been all that good for the world? The world somehow got by before they came along. The American public and many of its foreign policy experts praise the British Empire for ensuring stability, when they probably should examine its violent and often brutal colonial subjugation of what it regarded as inferior races for economic gain. Adolf Hitler admired the British Empire, but thought it too brutal.

As for the American Empire, it is littered with foreign policy interventions that caused more international problems than they solved. American entry into World War I led to a string of disasters that the world has never fully recovered from. Without the decisive U.S. entry into the first European war in its history in contravention of the Monroe Doctrine, a win by Germany, then merely a constitutional monarchy with a bombastic king, in a 10-round decision would have led only to the incremental adjustment of European borders to German advantage. Instead, U.S. entry to tip the balance of the war inadvertently brought about an allied victory that rubbed Germany’s nose in the dirt—demanding a war guilt clause for a conflict in which blame should have been shared across Europe, requiring harsh reparations on an economically drained nation, and deposing Kaiser Wilhelm II. The latter demand paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler, who exploited the war guilt clause, reparations, and the economic depression to rise to power and attempt to conquer Europe. World War II was merely a resumption of World War I two decades later.

The likely U.S. entry into World War I also kept the Russian provisional government (succeeding the fallen czar) involved in the conflict—increasing the probability of winning and providing much needed aid to do so. Had the Russian government sued for peace earlier, Vladimir Lenin could not have used the unpopular war to bring a communist government to power. The post-World War II Cold War was borne out of the ashes of World War I.

During that Cold War, the U.S. created the national security state, the first large peacetime army in American history, and a far-flung empire of military bases, unneeded alliances (especially after the advent of nuclear weapons to protect the homeland), foreign military interventions, and large amounts of foreign aid. Instead of spending much money and many lives (in brushfire wars in the developing world) to conduct an expansive worldwide Cold War against communism, a cheaper approach to accelerate the Soviet Empire’s collapse—as many empires have fallen over the course of history, by financial exhaustion—would have been smarter. With a less interventionist and less costly U.S. foreign policy, Soviet finances would have been depleted even faster than they were by the costs of providing aid and governance to basket cases they took over in the developing world.

During the Cold War, the U.S. also encouraged the spread of radical Islam around the world to counter godless communism, including providing aid to the anti-Soviet mujahideen to “give the USSR another Vietnam.” As an unintended consequence of supporting such Islamic militancy, the U.S. created the biggest threat to its homeland since the War of 1812—al-Qaeda.

Indirectly, the U.S. also helped encourage another strand of radical Islam in Iran. In 1953, it helped overthrow the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran, which led to the restoration of the autocratic shah. Radical Islam has gained support in many Muslim countries because the only dissent that is permitted against authoritarian governments is in the mosques. The United States has supported such autocrats, for example, the shah’s Iran and Egypt’s Mubarak today. The shah’s oppression led to the radical Khomeini revolution and to Iran being a problem to its neighbors. The United States then helped Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran as a counterweight and eventually built up another future enemy. And these are only a few of the many examples of ill-fated U.S. meddling in faraway, non-strategic countries and regions of the world.

Of course, as Friedman alludes, the United States created the system of open trade, yet trade happens naturally and U.S. efforts merely institutionalized it. An era of free trade had preceded restricted markets during World War I and the Great Depression.

But to accurately portray U.S. interventionist empire-building, especially after World War II, is not to “always blame America first.” In fact, disagreeing with the government’s foreign policy is different from hating American’s society and way of life. The founders of the United States, who are regularly idolized by most Americans, would roll over in their graves at the mutation of their traditional, peaceful, and restrained foreign policy into a militaristic, globe-girdling empire that is exhausting the country economically and ruining the republic that they created.

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, and Recarving Rushmore.

Full Biography and Recent Publications --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New from Ivan Eland!THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed (Updated Edition)Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century. In The Empire Has No Clothes, Ivan Eland, a leading expert on U.S. defense policy and national security, examines American military interventions around the world from the Spanish-American War to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Learn More

If President Eisenhower were saying Farewell today, he would have to say: Corporate-Pentagon-White House-Congress-Secrecy-Exceptionalism--Mainstream Media Complex. Senator J. William Fulbright is a traitor to my hometown. Everything was settled and clear in my Arkansas home-town puddle, until even our own people like Fulbright (Halfbright to President Johnson)came along to muddy the water with books deploring US militarism and imperialism: The Arrogance of Power and The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The clarity of my hometown certitudes was further disturbed when I undertook a few years of study in a College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas (now named after Fulbright), and then additional years of reading about Control of Information and Control of the Media in the U.S., the titles of two of my book-length bibliographies. And now the recent barrage of books on US imperial dysfunctions and derangements blurs completely my smiling recollection of faithful birddog, shotgun, covey of quail, and mother’s quail gravy. I don’t smile so much now, but who would like to be forced by some big fellows, who don’t seem very bright and sometimes seem deranged, to participate in digging our own graves? One of the big bullies is called exceptionalism. Since the graves are not finished, and despite the difficulties in talking with such a fellow, let me pose two questions. Does the US stand within the order of international law or outside it? Does the US still play by the rules it helped create? But he is busy digging. I must go elsewhere for a reply. The essays in American Exceptionalism and Human Rights , ed. Michael Ignatieff (2005) reply to these questions as they apply to human rights. And their answer is NO more than Yes. The U.S. approach to human rights differs negatively from that of most other Western nations. Three types of exceptionalism separate the US from the others: 1) exemptionalism (supporting treaties as long as Americans are exempt from them); 2) double standards (criticizing others for not heeding the finding of international human rights bodies, but ignoring what these bodies say about the US); and 3) legal isolationism (the tendency of US judges to ignore international jurisdictions and rulings). Andrew Bacevich in The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008) expresses an aversion to claims of US exceptionalism and calls for a realism that respects the limits of power, that expects informed leaders who can avoid unintended consequences, and is skeptical of easy solutions, especially those involving the use of armed force. Only a return to such principles can deal with our many crises: our economy in disarray, our presidency recklessly imperial; our nation infatuated with military power and engaged in endless wars A part of the doctrine of US exceptionalism is the belief in the US as WORLD TRANSFORMER. Another book by Bacevich hammers on this myth inWashington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. He identifies (quoting Time Magazine founder Henry Luce) “the American Credo””: as summoning the United States—“and the United States alone—to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world….for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.’” Alas, and the origin of Bacevich’s repugnance to it, from this Credo arises mass killing, torture, assassination, preemptive and other illegal interventions and invasions, massive surveillance, arrest without warrant, and on and on. One author, Chalmers Johnson, has taken four volumes to report the arrogance of US power; some the titles you will recognize: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire; The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic; Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic; and just published, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope. These books provide an alternative narrative to the seventy-year-old official, National Security State fiction of a benign nation compelled for the good of the world to invade and conquer and spread its power through some hundred military bases around the world. But how could this have happened? Noam Chomsky has been trying to explain it for thirty years. It goes like this. The power of the security obsessed over most of the populace these seventy years was not accidental, but was induced by an elaborate, well-financed propaganda system. Chomsky and Edward Herman explained it in their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They describe filters or control mechanisms through which propaganda messages are created by the mainstream media in support of the Corporate Security State, including: 1. concentrated business ownership; 2. advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; 3. heavy reliance by the media on information provided by the government, business, and “experts” approved and often funded by these agents of power; 4. use of “flak” as a means of disciplining media; and 5. anti-communism, as a national religion. While anti-communist and anti-socialist rhetoric continue to enforce the status quo, it has been largely displaced by the rhetoric of anti-terrorism. Manufacturing Consent has provided a model for analysis of a diversity of subjects. For example, Anthony DiMaggio in When Media Go to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Power (2009) demonstrates indoctrination in US and UK media coverage of the Iraq withdrawal debate, especially how media frame the antiwar movement to limit their effect; the ways human rights violations are highlighted in US media coverage of enemy states and played down in allied coverage; in journalistic values and practices; in US and UK coverage of Iran; in public response to the wars; and in the issue of controlling information to create consent. These books are only a few of the critiques of National Security (that is, USA today) myths, dogmas, and indoctrination. One might think that enough had been shown to scuttle them. But the doctrines have been successfully infused into our society. They circulate through body politic so seemingly naturally that most people can’t see them. That explains the silence of most people; why the public is so passive. And why some peace proponents of alternative practices—nonviolence, compassion, diplomacy, material assistance—losing their sense of humor, feel hopeless at times.

II. Alternatives to Militarism and Empire: Birthdays

But personally I learned eventually to separate myself from the bullies. I have dropped my shovel, though the thing still seems attached to my ankle. I learned a lot from the British socialist and literary critic, Raymond Williams. He urged all to step outside power systems and inspect them; they’re always contradictory. He taught also aggressive insertion of alternatives to official folly and violence into every available niche possible. Facts: The Pentagon has placed contractors in almost every county in the country. The Pentagon has millions of dollars annually to propagandize the US populace to believe our wars are permanent because always in defense of our threatened liberty. Consequently, high ranking officers and military heroes are always high in popularity. They’re consistently more successful than civilian candidates for the presidency. More facts: Dozens of official days for national glory, empire, wars and war heroes, and victory, countless monuments, and yes cemeteries. (But cemeteries are not about the dead; certainly not about the horribly wounded; since all live in national glory.) So, Williams would think, let us find ways to promote peace and justice by countering that popularity. BirthDAYS and National DAYS? Surely they are too obvious for Williams to overlook. Little attention to peace and justice heroes, compassion, diplomacy? Yes, of course. The forces of persuasion and conditioning are vastly unequal financially. But the people have numbers. A counter-conditioning campaign is called for, I imagine him thinking. In every way find niches for persuasion. Birthdays. When I looked at birthday celebrations local, state, and nation, active or passive supporters of the Security State.Complex seemed to dominate. I scanned the Nobel Peace Prize winners, and only King was honored by a national Day. So I began to gather birthdays of peacemakers, write brief biographies, and send to OMNI’s mailing list. The idea actually was not new. Several years ago a close friend wrote a biographical series on peacemakers, called “Dove Tales,” in our alternative newspaper, until the newspaper folded. But the idea was not forgotten. The new venture turned out to be heuristic. I wanted to reinforce knowledge of well-known peacemakers, as in the “Dove Tales,” but also to introduce stellar but little known peacemakers. I knew some nonviolence history, of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King, but I had never heard of Anderson Sa, the Brazilian musician who teaches young people alternatives to violence. Of the many peacemakers who teach diversity and toleration—Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama--, how many had heard of Bruno Hussar, promoter of interfaith harmony in his “Oasis of Peace” village, or Riane Eisler, who taught the partnership over the dominator model in human affairs, as explained in her book The Chalice and the Blade? The list grew (and is growing), as we affirm not military heroes but Thich Nhat Hanh, Colman McCarthy, Oscar Arias, Henry Salt, Albert Schweitzer, Astrid Lindgren, Jane Goodall, and on and on. Of course, my subject is US peace and justice heroes. US military men and women are lauded for their “service.” Let us concentrate on service to humanity without violence in preventing violence and wars (and now warming). A fine source is Michael True’s two volumes, Justice Seekers, Justice Makers (1985) and To Construct Peace: 30 More Justice Seekers, Peace Makers (1992), both international in scope but mainly about stellar US peacemakers—Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, Jim Corbett, Penny Lernoux, Maura Clarke, Noam Chomsky, Dolores Huerta, Denise Levertov, and more. But his total is only about sixty, when US peace heroes number in the thousands. So here’s our niche. We can replace the self-aggrandizing National Security State magnifying glass with one that can see another kind of SERVICE. At our events, our work, our homes. I even have a sculpture in my back yard with the names of thirty of Michael’s portraits, 15 women and 15 men.

III. National Days But the project to enlarge awareness of these heroes in the consciousness of the peace movement and the public at large is simple compared to the project to reinforce some DAYS and to change or even erase others

A. Reinforcing For whereas the birthdays at least right now require merely the writing and dissemination of a brief bio (though potentially much more could be performed), the national days involve necessarily the preparation of a more elaborate writing or event and commensurate publicity. Here is a partial list of DAYS TO CELEBRATE or COMMEMMORATE, in bold indicating OMNI’s active participation, with notes regarding OMNI observance.

February, Black History MONTH

March, Women’s History MONTH

March 1, Nuclear Victims DAY

March 8, International Women’s DAY: In simple ceremonies by women and men, we have focused on celebrating peace, justice, ecology women heroes, locally, nationally, internationally.

March 15-21 Sunshine WEEK

March 22, World Water DAY

Earth DAY, April 22: for three years we had out of town distinguished speakers. Then we merged with Fayetteville’s SpringFest: Donna and Kelly, Jamie and others organized displays and music at Fayetteville’ Walton Art Center’s Rose Garden. Earth DAY at World Peace Wetland Prairie: OMNI is part-owner with the city of 2 acres of wetland prairie and a half-acre peace-sign rock garden celebrating world peace. At WPWP on the Saturday preceding SpringFest we celebrate world peace with music, gardening, and children’s events..

Martin Luther King, Jr., Assassinated, April 4, 1968.

May 1, May DAY, the international workers holiday. (Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, among many others, were Wobblies, members of the International Workers of the World, IWW. An opportunity for great music.)

May 3, World Press Freedom Day. We have organized several events and newsletters to examine freedom of information in the US, and to read the names of news people killed in the line of duty.

May 15, International Conscientious Objectors’ DAY. This DAY should be observed; maybe next year.

Last Friday in April, Arbor DAY (different dates by states)

June 4, UN International DAY of Innocent Children, Victims of Aggression

June 5, UN World Environment DAY

June 15, International Peace Prayer DAY.

June 15-23, Human Costs of Military Toxics WEEK.

June 19, Juneteenth. A day to celebrate not only freedom from slavery for U.S. African-Americans, but for all people. In Fayetteville the Day has the attention of several groups on and off campus.

June, Gay Pride WEEK. A strong lgbtq org. exists in Fayetteville.

September 1, Labor DAY, for jobs, fair wages, health benefits, right to organize. Newsletter. Unions are very week in Arkansas.

September 12, Interdependence DAY (www.civworld.org)

September 17, Constitution DAY. For the past 3 years OMNI has celebrated this DAY with a special newsletter.

September 21, International DAY of Peace, Celebration of Peacemakers. We have paid special attention to this DAY, marking it in diverse ways over the years: a press conference at City Center next to the city’s Peace Prayer Fountain with church leaders speaking; international flags around the Fayetteville Square; sidewalk silent vigil with placards; and more.

September 25-October 2, Banned Books/Freedom to Read WEEK : OMNI has initiated activities and participated in others for a decade; e.g. roundtables on banned books at public library..

Sept. 25-Oct. 2, Keep Space for Peace WEEK: For almost a decade OMNI has sponsored a variety of programs during this week, including bringing Bruce Gagnon to Fayetteville.

October 1, International/World Vegetarian DAYOctober 1-7, International Vegetarian WEEK: Many in peace movement consider Vegetarianism fundamental to peace, justice and ecology, for its positive effects in ethics, nutrition, and checking global warming. Vegetarianism is at the heart of resistance to both wars and warming.

October 2, International DAY of Nonviolence (Gandhi’s BirthDAY). We have shown Attenborough’s film “Gandhi.” This is one of the DAYS we need to accentuate more.

Universal Children’s DAY, Oct. 4

World Hunger Day, Oct. 12.World Food DAY, Oct. 16 These two DAYs we have affirmed once by a newsletter and generally by supporting local food and community gardens. OMNI also has a Home Peace Places Network many of which are vegetable gardens.

United Nations DAY, October 24 (UN Charter became binding treaty): OMNI has celebrated this day for seven years by sponsoring notable speakers, including the president of the Central Ark. Chapter of UN/USA.

October 28, National Immigrants’ DAY

November, American Indian Heritage MONTH

International DAY for Tolerance, Nov. 16

International DAY to End Violence Against Women, Nov. 25

Buy Nothing DAY, Nov. 26

International DAY of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Nov. 29

Human Rights DAY, Dec. 10: Ever since OMNI’s beginning we have celebrated this DAY, with events of various kinds, including music/readings at the local bookstore.Bill of Rights DAY, Dec. 15: OMNI has cooperated with the local chapter of the ACLU to celebrate this DAY, sometimes at the home of a member for a talk and dinner. Occasionally we have combined the two DAYS.

If we listed all the possibilities for reinforcing peace, justice, and environmental values, we would be commemorating, that is reinforcing, at least one DAY in every month.

B. Transforming

A more complex initiative directly challenges the conditioning of the public to accept violence and wars through the many patriotic days. The UN initiative called the International Culture of Peace Decade (2000-2010) attempted to define the Culture of War and the Culture of Peace and move away from a war culture to a peace culture. But we cannot make this change so long as we celebrate the myths represented by the US official ceremonial Days, many of which directly support wars and preparations for wars. George Orwell wrote in 1984: "Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth”—for example, that wars are inevitable, that our species is inherently violent, that the US makes mistakes but is mainly benign. Much of the peace movement’s work in building a Culture of Peace involves the struggle to reinforce peaceful values despite the pervasive repetition of numerous nationalistic myths. In behavioral psychology, we are what we do. Most of the public accepts the messages of special Days (Daze?) and holidays that promote the US Security State, because they don’t see it (we’re not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union), and anyway overwhelming military force is necessary for our security, never mind it was we who have attacked other nations, and since the War of 1812 have been attacked by another nation only one more time at Pearl Harbor 1941. Here are some of the Days we must transform, if we are to counter the myths that enable such military expenditure and worldwide intervention.

Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14

President’s Day, Feb. 15. The rise of presidential and decline of congressional power reached it apex under President George W. Bush, who is guilty of war crimes and is impeachable by a dozen articles, and President Obama has not repudiated most of those powers.

May 1, Law DAY. The purchase of Congress by corporations to make laws favorable to corporations has become another great catastrophe endangering our democracy.

First Thursday of May, National DAY of Prayer. Our alternative should be DAY of Prayer by People of All Faiths.

2nd Sunday of May, Mother’s DAY for Peace: The present Mother’s Day is another national day commodified for business profit. For six years we have celebrated the anniversary of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day for Peace, by a luncheon or newsletter..

Memorial DAY, last Monday in May, formerly Decoration Day, a US holiday in remembrance of members of US armed forces killed in wars. It is time we offered an alternative—the most obvious possibility being all people killed in war. .

June 14, Flag DAY. Traditionally a day of patriotic emotion. We can offer alternatives for world peace.

June 15, Father’s DAY. Nothing yet. Like we are doing with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day regarding the role of women in the world, we could help redefine masculinity on this day for peace and justice.

July 4, Independence DAY. We have published an occasional newsletter suggesting alternative ways to celebrate Independence DAY: What should we celebrate? Declaration of Independence and empire? Or declaration of Interdependence? Earth Charter? Resistance and Liberation today? Patriotism.? Nationalism.? Democracy? Wars? Pacifism? Etc. The DAY is especially n opportunity each year to promote the value of freedom from oppression, for the people of the US, and for all people.

August 6 and 9, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Remembrance of Victims/Celebration of Peace Heroes: OMNI’s oldest activity, begun in the 1970s by our predecessor Peace Organizing Committee. Each year we encourage people to think about the bombs and about air war: Were the bombs justified? What were the consequences globally up to today and projected into the future? For many years the event (walk, speakers, music) occurred at the Greek Amphitheater on campus of U of Arkansas; now it is held at the Fulbright Peace Fountain at the center of the campus.

2nd Monday in October, Indigenous People of the Americas DAY (Columbus Day): As of 2010 OMNI will have sponsored this event for six years in conjunction with UofA’s Native American Symposium Committee. Our annual event has grown significantly into a half-day remembrance: a film at UA, readings from accounts of the Trail of Tears and talk also at UA, Walk to Trail of Tears Monument, Ceremony. Read the opening chapter on Columbus in Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

9-11/Patriot Day/Peaceful Tomorrows DAY. Following 9-11, another kind of immense explosion instantly occurred, characterized by xenophobia, patriotism. ethnocentrism, nationalism, chauvinism, and exceptionalism. Because 9-11 was employed by the Bush Administration to so horrendously escalate the so-called “War on Terrorism” as part of the 70-year-old US permanent war, asserting an alternative is particularly important. President Bush named 9-11 “Patriot Day.” In search of the criminals behind 9-11 he invaded the entire country of Afghanistan, and then invaded Iraq, began bombing Pakistan, and the cowed Congress passed the “Patriot Act” ostensibly to apprehend terrorists but in effect to restrict dissent. But we have living alternatives. Following 9-11, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows asked our leaders not to order our troops to engage in retaliatory war, but to consider the consequences both to our troops and to the civilian “enemies.” They cried out for international law, negotiation, and reconciliation. (See OMNI’s 2009 Newsletter on 9-11/Patriot Day/Peaceful Tomorrows for an extended statement.) In 2009 OMNI commenced its alternative to Patriot Day—Peaceful Tomorrows DAY.

November 11, Veterans’ Dat. Our 2008 Newsletter is a large compilation of articles and bibliographies about illegal and ruinous US wars. Since then we have published less, but our intention to counter Veterans’ Day as a traditional day to reinforce patriotism remains the same.

December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Increasingly, historians have questioned the simple explanation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a dastardly attack by Japanese imperialists; for example, Roland Worth, Jr.,’s No Choice But War. December 7 offers the peace movement a time to discusses the causes of the war in the Pacific and the causes of other wars, toward understanding better how to prevent them. OMNI issued a newsletter in 2008 elaborating these arguments. During the past two decades, the official, patriotic, illusory enthusiasm for US wars that has led to permanent war has received significant deflation.

Conclusion When people ask, Aren’t they still digging our grave? We can reply: Nobody promised a quick fix after 70 years of threat, fear, and hatred. When people ask, What can I do, what can one person do, to change the world from war to peace? We have one answer at least: We can reinforce a peaceful DAY or Change a warfare Day! Instead of digging graves, build a DAY. When scoffers ask, what difference can we make? We can answer: we are engaged in a struggle with bullies over the meanings of our ceremonies and myths, and there is something we can accomplish. If it is true that the US warfare state—Corporation-Pentagon-Secrecy-Surveillance-Violence-White House-Congress-Mass Media-Permanent War—is a dominant system that filters through a thousand political and social capillaries of repetitive transmission, yet is not finished, not complete, we can counter it, point by point, place by place, day by day, niche by niche by concrete actions building a Culture of Peace inside the Culture of War. We will be offering a model to the world, and sometimes models grab the world’s imagination. And remember the subtitle of Gandhi’s autobiography: My Life of Experiments.

References:

Bennett, James R. Control of Information in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography. Meckler, 1987. 2943 entries.

_____. Control of the Media in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland, 1992. 4749 entries.

_____. Political Prisoners and Trials: A Worldwide Annotated Bibliography, 1900 through 1993. McFarland, 1995. 475 entries on the US.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Can we humans transform our thinking in time to save our species from joining the dinosaurs and the dodos? The third and final book of the Thinking Toward Survival series gives a number of positive answers. New and revived ideas, frames, and numerous models include: (human) species consciousness alternative economics that is neither capitalism nor socialism examples of sustainability from around the world human species referenda models of participatory democracy green education critical thinking and creative thinking bioregionalism reforming higher educationand many more.

Author Coralie Koonce has an undergraduate degree in Social Science and a Master's degree in Comparative Literature. This is her seventh published book. Koonce was a long-time environmental activist, founder of the EcoCenter, and editor-publisher of Ozarkia.

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama They came out of nowhere -- with their angry slogans and their occasionally misspelled signs -- almost the split-second that the inaugural words of Barack Obama stopped reverberating off the concrete monuments of the National Mall. Fueled by megawattage of talk radio and Fox News Channel and then spread virally across the Internet, these Tea Parties and 9.12 Patriots and Oath Keepers and their right-wing fellow travelers hijacked the national debate over issues like immigration and climate change, forced political icons like Arizona Sen. John McCain to the extreme right and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist out of the GOP altogether, making nation figures out of radical libertarian Rand Paul while making multi-millionaires out of McCain's ex-running mate Sarah Palin and the movement's spiritual leader, conservative media king Glenn Beck. Over the last 15 months, this New Right and its radical ideas -- from rolling back a century of social progress to claiming that the president is not an American citizen -- have dominated the headlines, befuddled progressives expecting an era of positive change, and led to countless armchair pundits seeking to psychoanalyze the Tea Party from afar. But no journalist has gone behind the lines to report at what is really at the heart of the Obama-inspired backlash.

Until now.

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama is the first book about the new right-wing movement based upon extensive, in-the-field reporting. From the fall of 2009 through the spring of 2010, I traveled from the sun-baked day-laborer outposts of East Phoenix to the leafy and unlikely New England bed-and-breakfast where the radical Oath Keepers first gathered, from the opening prayers of the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville to the closing tears of Beck's American Revival in Orlando, all with the backfire of the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot still ringing in my ears. I met rank-and-file, self-styled freedom fighters like Russ Murphy, the grizzled and resentful yet plucky Vietnam vet and biker who leads the Delaware 9-12 Patriots, and leaders like Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, the most radical congressman in America, and I walked the tragic Pittsburgh cul-de-sac where a young and increasingly delusional talk-radio fanatic named Richard Poplawski gunning down three police officers in cold blood.

I saw first-hand the ways in which the anxiety generated by massive, structural unemployment in the United States and by massive cultural and demographic changes created a vortex of prejudice and fear -- some of it lamentable and some of it understandable -- and how the greatest threats to America were the hi-def hucksters who whipped these tempest-tossed masses into a frenzy, the shameless media stars who wanted ratings and fame and the cynical politicians clinging to their jobs and the circling vultures who looked at the Tea Party movement as a way to make an easy buck. But ultimately, what lies at the heart of the backlash is that awful things that Franklin Roosevelt once described as "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." America conquered those fears in 1933, but we may not be so lucky in 2010, and if we are not, the grim consequences will be more gridlocked politics, more outbreaks of senseless violence, and a threat to this nation's greatest ideals.

The book's publisher is HarperCollins, which has more info here.

Please consider joining the official Facebook group for "The Backlash." You can follow Will Bunch (me!) on Facebook and on Twitter. A short online bio is located here. The home page for this blog, Attytood, is here, and this is the homepage of the Philadelphia Daily News, where I am senior writer. I am also a senior fellow for Media Matters for America.

Several of my favorite authors have previewed "The Backlash" and offered these reviews:

"Often lost in the 24/7 news cycle is the story of what Americans really think about their politics. In this smartly written snapshot of the American political landscape, Will Bunch reports in vivid color on the fear-mongers, frenzied populists, and true extremists who peddle division and discord from coast to coast. Always compelling, but often disturbing, THE BACKLASH is an essential contribution to our understanding of what's happening right now on the political scene and what we might expect in the years to come."

-- David Brock, author of the best-selling BLINDED BY THE RIGHT: The Conscience of An Ex-Conservative

"Will Bunch has done what few working journalists these days are willing to do: Avoid the tired cliches and caricatures, and instead diligently report on what right-wing populism is all about--and why it is on the rise. In the process, he has given us an exquisitely written expose of a frightening political force that is shaping our elections, our society and our world."

9-11’s SECOND AND EQUAL SIGNIFICANCE: OVERTHROW OF ALLENDE OF CHILEWith strong US prodding by Nixon and Kissinger and help from the CIA, General Pinochet led a coup d’etat to overthrow the elected president Allende of Chile at the time the most democratic country in South America. On 9-11 the USA is both victim and victimizer, and both should be remembered.See Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now (9-15-10), interview of Juan Garces, the last surviving aide to Allende, now a human rights lawyer in Spain who has spent all these years trying to bring Pinochet and his fellow criminals to justice, on the basis of the Nuremberg crimes against humanity and genocide laws. He has worked with the great human rights judge Baltazar Garzon, who attempted to prosecute General Franco’s officials, and who has been stripped of his judgeship by the Spanish legal establishment. Question: Should we remember massacres and demand justice for the victims of mass murderers? Garces told the story of Hitler dismissing objections to his decision to invade Poland—that it would be condemned by the world—by saying world opinion is short-lived, citing the Turkish genocide against Armenians: Who remembers them?

On Channel 34 at least, BP and ExxonMobil are pushing their GOODNESS hard. BP has a black lady saying she's from NO and represents BP's efforts to do the right thing for people affected by the spill. When I taught my course on Language and Public Policy, I occasionally wrote a company about the people in their (print) ads, and always they were actors or actresses. ExxonM is showing pictures of a clear fluid running through a spotless pipe. Now do they think the public is ignorant and stupid? Yes they do, and eagerly spend millions of dollars on these ads. A daunting problem for environmentalists. D

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Dear james,Ask your representative to sign on to the Frank-Paul letter.

Mural panel on the cost of war by Jessica Munguia, part of AFSC's upcoming Windows & Mirrors exhibit. In our work for peace, there are pivotal moments we cannot let pass us by. For the first time in years, we have a real chance to make some significant cuts in the United States’ enormous military budget. Let’s seize the moment and reach out to Congress today.

Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001—nine years ago this week—U.S. spending on the military has increased dramatically. Money we’ve desperately needed here at home has been poured into weapons and warmaking, creating huge deficits that have crippled job creation and drained needed funds for housing, education, and healthcare.

Today, with our country awash in foreclosures, our school systems bankrupt, our infrastructure crumbling, and with at least 14.9 million Americans unemployed, policymakers in Washington know that something must be done to cut spending and address our rising deficit. But when it comes to targeting military spending, almost 56 percent of the entire discretionary federal budget, they are still hesitating. Funds for weapons and warfare continue to enjoy a privileged status in this country, protected from significant cuts even in the worst economic crisis in decades.

That’s where you come in.

As you may know, the President’s special commission on reducing the deficit is meeting now. We have a brief window in which to make it clear that when it comes to cutting spending, the military budget must be on the table.

Here’s our best opportunity to do this now:

Democrat Barney Frank (MA) and Republican Ron Paul (TX) have presented specific recommendations for cutting almost $1 trillion from the Pentagon’s vast budget over the next ten years. But they need your U.S. representatives to join them in sending this message.

Your previous work on these issues have helped bring us to this moment. Millions of people are now aware of how vast spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has wasted resources and caused destruction and suffering at home and abroad. With more voices every day calling for cuts, the Pentagon is beginning to feel the heat and even Secretary of Defense Gates is calling for “restraint” in military spending.

We believe we must go beyond “restraint.” But our window is limited.

If we can send a strong message in the next days and weeks, we can help shatter the privileged status enjoyed by military spending. We can refocus our country’s priorities on what’s most important—jobs, health care, education, human services—efforts that affirm the worth and dignity of every person.

Ask your representatives to sign on to the Frank-Paul letter, strongly recommending that substantial cuts in military spending be on the table in all of the Obama Administration’s work to reduce the national debt.

Wage Peace,Peter Lems and Mary Zerkel

P.S. We’ve spent $1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. AFSC has been asking young people from all over the country to make videos showing how they’d rather see that money spent. Join the One Trillion Dollar Video contest by making a short video before the November 30 deadline. Please share this with any young people or youth groups you know. The winner gets a trip to Washington, DC, to show the video to members of Congress.

Forward this message to your friends.

Help support AFSC's worldwide work for peace, justice and human dignity. Make a donation today.

I am writing with an urgent request that you sign on to Barney Frankand Ron Paul's bipartisan letter to the deficit commission encouragingthat cuts in military spending be on the table in any efforts to reducethe deficit.

I am concerned that with more than half of the discretionary budgetgoing to the military, important programs needed by my community--likehousing and education--are being squeezed.

We need to make sure that we aren't squandering scarce resources onwaste and outdated weapons systems instead of investing in ourcommunities.

Last Saturday afternoon over 60 people publicly affirmed friendship with Muslims and other world religions.Public support for our table at Farmer's Market has been markedly less. Join us for a half hour, hour to talk to people about these ruinous wars and the even worse effects of warming approaching. North side of Old Post Office.

PSA FOR FORUM ON PRESIDENTIAL POWERSubject of Forum: The panelists discuss why and how the powers of the presidency have vastly expanded, while popular participation in our political life has declined, and how these developments have led to a dangerous imbalance of power.

OCTOBER 8, 6 PM

AT OMNI CENTER FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY

COORDINATOR: Dick Bennett

Panelists: Law Professor Steve Sheppard: Louis Fisher, In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power and the Reynolds Case

Rev. Dave Hunter: David Swanson. Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.

John Rule: Gary Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.

Today Tues. 9-14 on Democracy Now (CAT Ch. 11, 7-8a.m) excellent short program on fracking with interviews of Josh Fox and clips from his "Gasland" and of Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica. Google Democracy Now and click on recent shows

Mary Anne SennettDick, believe you will appreciate this. It's about the constitution! mary ann...12:57 PM (6 hours ago) Below is the reason we women particularly need to stay politically active, to recruit more women into the ranks of the politically active, and to strive make sure all Americans exercise their right to vote!

Please pass this important information on to your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers so that the sacrifice our brave ancestors made for our right to vote is never forgotten!!

This is the story ......of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

(Lucy Burns)

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis) They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul) When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh MY memory. Some women won't vote this year because - Why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Mrs Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a 60 day sentence.

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco/Bingo night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women.Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.'

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The information contained in this message is confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, do not distribute or copy this communication. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the sender. Thank you for your cooperation.

-- Kathryn SpinksPresident, FCDW

Reply Forward

Reply |Dick Bennett to Mary show details 7:33 PM (1 minute ago)

Mary Anne, thank you for this powerful message. Did you create it? One of the DAYS I have tried to transform locally, is Mother's Day, to change it to Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day for Peace. Will you help that next year?

Last Saturday afternoon over 60 people publicly affirmed friendship with Muslims and other world religions.Public support for our table at Farmer's Market has been markedly less. Join us for a half hour, hour to talk to people about these ruinous wars and the even worse effects of warming approaching. North entrance to Old Post Office.

Thanks, Dick- Show quoted text -

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Mary Anne Sennett wrote:

Dick, believe you will appreciate this. It's about the constitution! mary anne sennett

Below is the reason we women particularly need to stay politically active, to recruit more women into the ranks of the politically active, and to strive make sure all Americans exercise their right to vote!

Please past this important information on to your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers so that the sacrifice our brave ancestors made for our right to vote is never forgotten!!

This is the story ......of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

(Lucy Burns)

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis) They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul) When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh MY memory. Some women won't vote this year because - Why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Mrs Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a 60 day sentence.

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco/Bingo night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women.Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.'

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Friday, September 10, 2010

Poison ivy grows faster and becomes more poisonous. Ragweed produces more pollen, and asthma. Japanese beetles live longer. Ticks increase.

Ouch. What, when, where? Duke University scientists discovered these consequences of the CO2 increasing in our atmosphere and resultant warming.

Well, it’s good to be warned now, you might say. But these warnings were published in 2006. That is, before 2006 scientists knew that anthropogenic C02 and warming were increasing and were already studying their effects. In 2007 the summative, magisterial 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report was published. And since then hundreds of additional scientific studies and many books have been published reaffirming the IPCC Reports. For example, in 2010: Bill McKibben,. Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet; Peter D. Ward, The Flooded Earth: Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps.

The question then is not is warming happening, but why do so many people behave as though it isn’t? Yes, we resist change even though we know our grandchildren will pay for it a decade from now. But is reducing CO2 entirely within our power?

Not if corporations decide. We clutch the water-logged life-preserver of denial and inaction as we sink, partly because of the deliberate, systematic, extraordinarily well-financed disinformation disseminated by corporations to ensure business profit as usual.

In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway tell about corporate use of a few bought scientists to obfuscate and delay urgently needed change. Oil company officials particularly have sowed confusion. Take as one example our knowledge of the steady retreat of Arctic sea ice, the melting of Greenland’s massive ice sheets, and the spectacular breakup in 2002 of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, all found in IPCC reports. Well, in 2007, just as the new IPCC report was being released, one of the front groups financed by ExxonMobil offered $10,000 for each pseudo-study disputing the findings of the scientific community. The result is melting ice, rising, acidic seas, weather extremes, droughts, forest fires, and super ivy, ragweed, beetles, and ticks.

Greetings Friends of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Here's an update on important things going on in our GZ community and beyond. Check them out. Peace (one day at a time), Leonard Eiger, Media and Outreach Co-CoordinatorGround Zero Center for Nonviolent Action; www.gzcenter.org Email: subversivepeacemaking@comcast.net

Wednesday, September 15 Jessica Arteaga stands trial in U.S. District Court, Tacoma for her May 3rd (2010) "blue line" crossing at Bangor gate during Ground Zero's vigil and nonviolent direct action. Jessica is charged with trespassing on government property. On the day of the arrest Jessica sat down on the blue line that indicates the border between the County side and the Federal side. Initially the State Patrol intended to arrest Jessica and ordered her to stand up. When she stood up, she was over the blue line, and after further discussion between State Patrol and Base military police, the military police arrested her. You can read more about the May 3rd events in the July Ground Zero newsletter .

Jessica's trial takes place at 1:30 pm in Judge J. Richard Creatura's chambers. Supporters are invited to meet in front of the courthouse for a pre-trial vigil at 12:30 pm that same day. The Tacoma Union Station Courthouse is located at 1717 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, Washington, 98402. It is well served by public transit and there is ample pay parking behind the courthouse. Click here for more information on location and parking.

Yesterday, September 9th, marked the 30th anniversary of the first Plowshares action. Happy Anniversary Plowshares! Read more at http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/.

Tuesday, September 21 is United Nations International Day of Peace (Peace Day). Events around Puget Sound include Bellevue, Seattle and Vashon. The Seattle Raging Grannies will be showing up at the Bellevue event at Eastside Friends Meetinghouse (Go Grannies!). Find all of these events at http://internationaldayofpeace.org/participate/find_an_event.html. An interfaith movement, A Million Minutes for Peace, is asking people of all faiths from all over the world to stop at noon and pray for peace for one minute on Peace Day.

The Y-12 (July 5th) Federal arrestees were granted a continuance, and their new trial date is January 11, 2011.

And last, but not least, the Disarm Now Plowshares defendants are scheduled to be arraigned on September 24th. More details on this and other happenings coming soon. You can also keep up on Disarm Now Plowshares at their blog: http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/.

Pentagon Considers Buying and Destroying Copies of Afghan War MemoirThe New York Times reports Pentagon officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets. The book “Operation Dark Heart,” was written by Anthony Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. Army reviewers originally signed off on the book’s publication but the Defense Intelligence Agency later identified more than 200 passages suspected of containing classified information. The book reportedly includes Shaffer’s accounts of clandestine operations, including eavesdropping operations by the National Security Agency. From Democracy Now (9-10-10).Comment (Dick): There is presently a furor against the church in Gainesville who proposes to burn a few copies of the Quran on 9-ll, an insignificant action that will not affect the reading of the Quran anywhere. Yet no outcry against the Pentagon’s possible “burning:” of 10,000 copies of a book that will virtually silence it. What to do? Order a copy of the book today. Make sure Banned Books Week coming soon publicizes this Pentagon overreach. Use your imagination.

Here is an excellent summary of the profound wrongs of the Iraq invasion and occupation, and the remedies, from the astute and compassionate Mennonites.

OMNI is tabling against US WARS (AND WARMING) each Saturday morning at the Farmer's Market, north side of Old Post Office. Join us. We should have a presence against these disasters, talking to people about what we should do to CHANGE the old myths and patterns and practices that have permitted WARS AND WARMING to imperil us and the world. Join us. Let us fill that space and speak to the people, trusting that the great majority of Americans do not like torture, or assassination, or the drones or special ops employed to kill without jury or judge; or bombing innocent children and their parents; or humiliating people by breaking into their homes; or causing mass dislocation, two or three million Iraqis forced abroad, and two million internally displaced; and all regardless of what is needed for real security for us and the world. Join us. Wear your OMNI shirt if you have one; that is a statement for peace, justice, and the environment. And trusting that the people like the EPA's protections, the CLEAN AIR ACT, protecting our health, and block ing warming. Join us.And this is not OMNI's only present voice against WARS AND WARMING. Friday night saw our second Forum on Afghanistan with a panel and audience aroused against that longest war that perpetuates US permanent war. And Saturday night Jacob George's Ride To the End (of the wars) fundraiser, supported by OMNI, received a significant financial boost. And our Climate Change Task Force (Joanna and Nathan) and newsletter (Robert) speak out strong and steady. What more we will do depends upon us all. Join us.-- Dick BennettWars and Warming: Reducing the FootprintsMy blog:http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/jbennet@uark.edu(479) 442-46002582 Jimmie Ave.Fayetteville, AR 72703

> Today "marks the end of combat in Iraq."> 1. The U.S. presence in Iraq is still overbearing even with the troop> reduction from 165,000 to 50,000. As one news correspondent reported, a> service person indicated there really is no difference between an> advisor and a combatant.>> 2. The U.S. military's overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam> Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis -- just the opposite.>> 3. Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in> 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system.>> 4. The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created> by the US intervention have been abandoned.>> 5. Iraq still does not have a functioning government.>> 6.The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops with more> than one million American service members deployed, over 4,400 have been> killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four> U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that> require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military> have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed> suicide.>> 7.The war has drained our treasury with over spent $750 billion on the> Iraq War effort. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the> economic crises and left us without the funds needed for our schools,> healthcare, infrastructure and a jobs program that are clean, green.>> 8. The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis> of lies have not been held accountable.>> 9. The U.S. Department of Defense has been unable to account for $8.7> billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and> reconstruction.>> 10. The war has not made us more secure -- just the opposite.>> Please call on President Obama and his Administration and on the> Congress to take the following actions:>> 1. Withdrawal of all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq and> the closing of all U.S. bases;>> 2. Reparations to help the Iraqis repair their basic infrastructure and> increased funds for the millions of internally and externally displaced> Iraqis;>> 3. Full support for the U.S. troops who suffer from the internal and> external wounds of war;>> 4. Prosecution of those officials responsible for dragging our country> into> this disaster;>> 5. Transfer the funds used for war into resources to rebuild America,> with a focus on green jobs.> White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact 202-456-1111>> Congress:> http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/dbq/officials>> Please let me know if you make a contact, and what the response is:> SusanML@MennoniteUSA.org>> Peace,> Susan>> Susan Mark Landis, Denominational Minister for Peace and Justice Mennonite> Church USA PO Box 173, Orrville OH 44667 phone/fax 330-683-6844; Toll free> 866-866-2872, ext 23052 SusanML@MennoniteUSA.org;> www.MennoniteUSA.org/peace--

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Join us tonightGas Fracking in Arkansas is a big deal!

If you haven't got to hear the story yet, here's your chance.

6:30 tonight at OMNI

(From an alert to the Green Drinks group) Many of us may have heard of or seen the new documentary, "Gasland". Tonight, Green Drinks will be participating in a natural gas drilling discussion, hosted by Joyce Hale, President of the League of Women Voters, Washington County. The program begins at 6:30 PM, and will be held at the OMNI Center in Fayetteville. (3274 N Lee Ave., Fayetteville. Just South of Liquor World and one block East of College Ave.) We hope you can join us for this important discussion on the ramifications of drilling for natural gas in the Natural State.

Join us tonight for a SPECIALNWA Green Drinks!

Our gathering will look a little bit different tonight. Many of us may have heard of or seen the new documentary, "Gasland". Tonight, Green Drinks will be participating in a natural gas drilling discussion, hosted by Joyce Hale, President of the League of Women Voters, Washington County. The program begins at 6:30 PM, and will be held at the OMNI Center in Fayetteville. (3274 N Lee Ave., Fayetteville. Just South of Liquor World and one block East of College Ave.) We hope you can join us for this important discussion on the ramifications of drilling for natural gas in the Natural State.